FFmpeg vs. MPEG-LA royalties [LWN.net]

FFmpeg vs. MPEG-LA royalties

Posted Jan 26, 2010 22:03 UTC (Tue) by roc (subscriber, #30627)
In reply to: FFmpeg vs. MPEG-LA royalties by DonDiego
Parent article: Blizzard: HTML5 video and H.264 - what history tells us and why we're standing with the web

We probably have ten times as many users as Ubuntu and Debian. That's not a bet we would be comfortable taking.

Plus, living at the ongoing mercy of the MPEG-LA just isn't a good idea. Blizzard's latest blog post recaps the efforts of patent holders to squeeze out the last drop of royalties out media patents near the end of their life:
http://www.0xdeadbeef.com/weblog/2010/01/html5-video-and-...

And aside from all that, there are huge licensing problems for content providers that don't go away even if we think we're somehow immune.

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FFmpeg vs. MPEG-LA royalties

Posted Jan 26, 2010 22:16 UTC (Tue) by DonDiego (guest, #24141) [Link] (9 responses)

VLC has many users as well (and they include FFmpeg), nobody ever bothered them. You should read the MPEG-LA licensing terms. They only talk of fees per unit *sold*. Mozilla does not sell Firefox. Neither does FFmpeg sell H.264 decoders. There is no problem for either of us.

FFmpeg vs. MPEG-LA royalties

Posted Jan 27, 2010 1:28 UTC (Wed) by roc (subscriber, #30627) [Link] (8 responses)

I don't know why MPEG-LA hasn't sued VLC, but selective enforcement is dangerous precisely because it's opaque and unpredictable. And Firefox still has a lot more users, more usage, and a much higher profile than VLC.

It's highly questionable that the MPEG-LA considers Mozilla to already have a patent license just because we don't "sell" Firefox. You don't get a license just by meeting the terms, you have to explicitly enter into an agreement. So I suggest you prove your point by obtaining a free license from the MPEG-LA to distribute a large number of units of a product with a price of zero. Let me know when you've got that.

Beyond that, what if someone sells a product that includes Firefox? What if the MPEG-LA revises their license terms? What if the corporations that run the MPEG-LA just decide they don't like us? You'd have us bet everything on the long-term goodwill of the MPEG-LA. That would be extremely foolish.

FFmpeg vs. MPEG-LA royalties

Posted Jan 27, 2010 11:58 UTC (Wed) by DonDiego (guest, #24141) [Link] (7 responses)

> And Firefox still has a lot more users, more usage, and a much higher
> profile than VLC.

Yes, but the MPEG-LA knows about VLC and FFmpeg and they have never moved a finger. Why would they? To skim off all the money we have made so far, i.e. nothing, and get lots of bad press in return?

> It's highly questionable that the MPEG-LA considers Mozilla to already
> have a patent license just because we don't "sell" Firefox. You don't
> get a license just by meeting the terms, you have to explicitly enter
> into an agreement. So I suggest you prove your point by obtaining a free
> license from the MPEG-LA to distribute a large number of units of a
> product with a price of zero. Let me know when you've got that.

Go look at the terms. You don't need a license from the MPEG-LA (and neither does FFmpeg) because you don't qualify for requiring one:

http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/Agreement.aspx

> Beyond that, what if someone sells a product that includes Firefox?

Then they have a problem to deal with depending on who they are, how much money they have and in which country they reside? But why does that concern you? Software patents on multimedia technology are in no way special. You did not stop shipping plugin support in Firefox when Microsoft got sued. There is a multitude of other software patents that apply to Mozilla software. Why is this case in any way special?

> What if the MPEG-LA revises their license terms?

The new licensing terms should come out any moment now since they were slated to be replaced in January. I'm just as curious as you are.

> What if the corporations that run the MPEG-LA just decide they don't
> like us? You'd have us bet everything on the long-term goodwill of
> the MPEG-LA. That would be extremely foolish.

They sue you and get no money out of you. Then you have to stop US downloads for Firefox or offer a crippled version instead. Their loss. However, it will make the software patent nonsense newsworthy and fuel the discussion.

What exactly are you afraid of? I was never afraid that somebody might make me pay a billion bucks. I never had them and never will. So what exactly is it that you are fearing?

I can imagine hilarious scenarios of course: airport controls for software patent contraband :-)

FFmpeg vs. MPEG-LA royalties

Posted Jan 27, 2010 23:55 UTC (Wed) by roc (subscriber, #30627) [Link] (4 responses)

> Yes, but the MPEG-LA knows about VLC and FFmpeg and they have never moved
> a finger. Why would they?

OK, VLC and FFmpeg are not interesting because they have no money. But as soon as anyone with money wants to distribute VLC or FFmpeg, then they could be a target.

> Go look at the terms. You don't need a license from the MPEG-LA (and
> neither does FFmpeg) because you don't qualify for requiring one:
> http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/Agreement.aspx

I don't see anything in there which says we wouldn't require one. Can you quote specific text that implies certain distributors of codecs don't require a license?

Typically when a patent holder makes a patent available royalty-free they don't say that "you don't require a license" ... that doesn't make much sense, since it's axiomatic that everyone who infringes a patent "requires a license". Instead they make a blanket grant of a free license to everyone, or grant something equivalent like a covenant to not sue. For example, see
http://www.microsoft.com/Interop/osp/default.mspx

> You did not stop shipping plugin support in Firefox when Microsoft got
> sued. There is a multitude of other software patents that apply to
> Mozilla software. Why is this case in any way special?

Patents that are essential for implementing a Web standard (as the MPEG-LA patents threaten to be), are much more of a problem than patents like the Eolas patent that can be worked around or avoided in particular browser implementations.

Also, "stop shipping plugin support" was never been an option since it would not leave us with a viable browser. And yes, if shipping an H.264 codec is ever a necessity for being a viable browser, we'll try to find a way to ship one somehow. Compromise is better than irrelevance.

> They sue you and get no money out of you.

They'd get money. http://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2009/11/19/state-of-mozill...

> Then you have to stop US
> downloads for Firefox or offer a crippled version instead. Their loss.

We'd be out millions of dollars and back where we started ... actually, even worse, since we would have to return to our free-codec efforts having lost time and credibility.

And remember, this entire discussion ignores the issues for content providers. Even if H.264 decoding was entirely unencumbered, having to pay MPEG-LA taxes to publish video on the Web is unacceptable.

FFmpeg vs. MPEG-LA royalties

Posted Jan 28, 2010 12:55 UTC (Thu) by DonDiego (guest, #24141) [Link] (3 responses)

> > Yes, but the MPEG-LA knows about VLC and FFmpeg and they have never
> > moved a finger. Why would they?

> OK, VLC and FFmpeg are not interesting because they have no money. But
> as soon as anyone with money wants to distribute VLC or FFmpeg, then
> they could be a target.

I think the fundamental problem is that you are the sort of person that wants insurance policies and buys them, while I am not.

> > Go look at the terms. You don't need a license from the MPEG-LA (and
> > neither does FFmpeg) because you don't qualify for requiring one:
> > http://www.mpegla.com/main/programs/AVC/Pages/Agreement.aspx

> I don't see anything in there which says we wouldn't require one. Can
> you quote specific text that implies certain distributors of codecs
> don't require a license?

There is nothing in there which says you require one.

Scenarios for which you require a license are listed and they do not apply to you, isn't that enough?

> > Then you have to stop US downloads for Firefox or offer a crippled
> > version instead. Their loss.

> We'd be out millions of dollars and back where we started ... actually,
> even worse, since we would have to return to our free-codec efforts
> having lost time and credibility.

There are two points I think you are not assessing correctly:

1) H.264 video + AAC audio + MP4 container as industry standard

Multimedia used to be completely fragmented with a multitude of competing and incompatible standards fighting for market share. Now we have a standard for lossy video and audio and it is being adopted across the board. It is not just used for web video, it is used on Bluray disks, it is used in cinemas and in Hollywood production, it is used by the ripping scene, it is used by video sharing sitesa already.

All these places now have the encoding infrastructure in place and no interest in changing or exchanging it.

2) viable alternatives

Let's face it, Vorbis is an excellent audio codec, but Theora is not a state of the art video codec and Ogg is a horrible container. Theora still has room for improvement of course, but it will never close the gap to more modern video codecs. Comparatively little effort is being spent on it and it must fight with one hand behind its back due to avoiding anything that might be patented. Even without such a handicap Theora will never be able to match the quality standards of more modern video codecs.

Keep in mind that web video is not YouTube and the unspeakable quality it offers nowadays. Think a few years into the future and web video will all be high-definition content.

> And remember, this entire discussion ignores the issues for content
> providers. Even if H.264 decoding was entirely unencumbered, having
> to pay MPEG-LA taxes to publish video on the Web is unacceptable.

This reminds me of something: Mozilla made a study about possible submarine patents on Theora. What did you find? Why was the study never published? If you found nothing, there surely wouldn't be a reason to keep mum about it, don't you agree?

FFmpeg vs. MPEG-LA royalties

Posted Jan 28, 2010 20:29 UTC (Thu) by roc (subscriber, #30627) [Link] (1 responses)

> I think the fundamental problem is that you are the sort of person that
> wants insurance policies and buys them, while I am not.

Maybe that is because we have built up a large organization that serves hundreds of millions of users, and you have not. Or maybe it's because we're used to seeing and fighting threats to the open Web.

> Scenarios for which you require a license are listed and they do not
> apply to you, isn't that enough?

No. The document lists scenarios for which a license is offered and is silent about other scenarios. More about this in the other part of the thread.

> There are two points I think you are not assessing correctly:

How great H.264 is is not the issue here. The licensing is the problem.

> This reminds me of something: Mozilla made a study about possible
> submarine patents on Theora. What did you find? Why was the study never
> published? If you found nothing, there surely wouldn't be a reason to
> keep mum about it, don't you agree?

For reasons I honestly don't understand, our lawyers tell us not to talk about it. All I can do is point to our actions in distributing Theora.

FFmpeg vs. MPEG-LA royalties

Posted Jan 31, 2010 11:37 UTC (Sun) by DonDiego (guest, #24141) [Link]

> > I think the fundamental problem is that you are the sort of person
> > that wants insurance policies and buys them, while I am not.

> Maybe that is because we have built up a large organization that serves
> hundreds of millions of users, and you have not.

Oh, VLC alone has over a hundred million downloads, add to that all other multimedia software based on FFmpeg. Then think of YouTube and Facebook, which are probably the largest users of FFmpeg and how many users they have.

FFmpeg is less visible than Firefox, but by no means do I believe it has less users. I'll turn your argument around:

If tomorrow all copies of Firefox deleted themselves, most people will curse and fire up the alternative browsers that are likely already installed on their machines.

If tomorrow all copies of the FFmpeg libraries delete themselves, a lot of things will stop working where no viable replacement is available or only available for a considerable amount of money.

Free software multimedia will be reduced to dealing with the <5% of fringe content for which alternative libraries exist. Large content providers will have to reengineer their backend infrastructure.

> Or maybe it's because we're used to seeing
> and fighting threats to the open Web.

Maybe we act the way we do because we have been treading the patent-filled lands of multimedia for a decade or more. You are the newbies here, not us.

> > There are two points I think you are not assessing correctly:

> How great H.264 is is not the issue here. The licensing is the problem.

I'm not particularly fond of H.264 myself. It's far too complex a standard and the quality to decoding complexity tradeoff is forcing me to upgrade my vintage hardware.

However, we finally have an open standard for lossy video encoding. This is great news in the world of multimedia.

> > This reminds me of something: Mozilla made a study about possible
> > submarine patents on Theora. What did you find? Why was the study
> > never published? If you found nothing, there surely wouldn't be a
> > reason to keep mum about it, don't you agree?

> For reasons I honestly don't understand, our lawyers tell us not to talk
> about it. All I can do is point to our actions in distributing Theora.

This confirms the rumors that there are submarines lurking in the Theora ocean. Nothing else can explain your actions and why Nokia (who supposedly holds patents that Theora infringes) is afraid of touching Theora.

FFmpeg vs. MPEG-LA royalties

Posted Feb 1, 2010 14:29 UTC (Mon) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link]

>1) H.264 video + AAC audio + MP4 container as industry standard

Just to take this discussion further off track:

I think it's interesting to look at the technologies used as standard by pirate groups. Since they are already infringing copyrights, these people tend to have very little interest in any legal or philosophical issues attached to any particular technology, and gravitate towards the technically superior solution.

For HD, pirated video is almost exclusively H264, plus AAC or Vorbis (no clear winner here), in a Matroska container. For whatever reason, nobody seems willing to use MP4 unless they have to for compatibility with hardware (and perhaps software) produced by companies with a vested interest in that container.

Not especially relevant, but I found it interesting...

FFmpeg vs. MPEG-LA royalties

Posted Jan 28, 2010 8:15 UTC (Thu) by cmccabe (guest, #60281) [Link] (1 responses)

> > What if the corporations that run the MPEG-LA just decide they don't
> > like us? You'd have us bet everything on the long-term goodwill of
> > the MPEG-LA. That would be extremely foolish.

> They sue you and get no money out of you. Then you have to stop US
> downloads for Firefox or offer a crippled version instead. Their loss.

Mozilla made $78 million in revenue in fiscal 2008. That's not "no money." They don't want to encourage users to adopt a patented codec that will end up costing them. Can you really blame them?

Anyway, IE still has a huge honking market share and probably won't implement any kind of HTML5 video. I wonder if someone will write a plugin to do it. I'm not familiar with how the plugin architecture works so I don't even know if such a plugin would be feasible.

> I can imagine hilarious scenarios of course: airport controls for software
> patent contraband :-)

I can imagine some kind of futuristic tablet computing device where installing unauthorized software was impossible. All software would have to be approved by some centralized authority, who would be an easy target for patent litigation. In that case, distributing free software that used patented codecs could easily become impossible.

Of course, that could never happen. Pure science fiction :)

FFmpeg vs. MPEG-LA royalties

Posted Jan 28, 2010 10:52 UTC (Thu) by DonDiego (guest, #24141) [Link]

> I can imagine hilarious scenarios of course: airport controls for software
> patent contraband :-)

> I can imagine some kind of futuristic tablet computing device where
> installing unauthorized software was impossible. All software would have
> to be approved by some centralized authority, who would be an easy target
> for patent litigation. In that case, distributing free software that used
> patented codecs could easily become impossible.

Apple ships an H.264 decoder with that device already, patent license and all. So no problem from that side...